A different kind of decision might have landed LeBron James at Notre Dame with an assistant coach named Urban Meyer. (ESPN Photo)

It never came to fruition, but it was more than a thought at one point. Meyer told The Palm Beach Post that when he was a receivers’ coach at Notre Dame, he offered James a football scholarship.

“I offered him a scholarship when he was a sophomore in high school at St. Vincent St. Mary’s,” said Meyer, now the coach at Ohio State. “I was at Notre Dame. He was a receiver, and I was a receivers’ coach.”

And what kind of player was James?

“Great,” Meyer said.

Meyer’s career track turned upward from there, with national championships and three head coaching jobs since. James, who just won his first NBA championship with the Miami Heat, hasn’t had too shabby of a career since that 10th-grade offer, either.

Meyer is a big fan of the Heat and coach Erik Spoelstra. The two men spent time together during the past NBA offseason.

“I love that coach,” Meyer said, according to the Post. “He reached out to me, we’ve become friends. What him and that team did, I mean, against the haters, I was really proud of those guys.”

Spoelstra first contacted Meyer.

“Well, I got more out of it than he did,” Meyer told the paper. “He reached out to me, but the ability to deal with a star athlete is much harder than most people think. And at Florida, I had to deal with a bunch. Obviously, with the Heat, he’s dealing with a bunch. And the way he does it, I think is brilliant.”